2010 wishes

You’ve probably heard it many times that 2009 has been an extraordinary year. This chart of consumer and business confidence show just how extraordinary the beginning of this year was.

Consumer and business confidence were 3 to 4 standard deviations away from their long run average — in English, this means people were really, really, really scared (for a more technical explanation, see this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/68-95-99.7_rule).

Here is wishing that all of you have a far more ordinary year in 2010.